“Missus?” Finn piped up. “Is everything alright?”
“Oh, yes, it’s fine.” I flashed the guard a smile, which made him uneasy. The poor thing. Liam probably scared these men regularly with threats about being too friendly with his wife. “Ijust need sage to make the butter sauce for the gnocchi. Forgot to grab it when I was getting the potatoes.”
“No problem, missus. We’ll just stop back in produce on our way to the registers.” Finn gave me a clipped, professional nod.
Adorable. These guys were too cute. They shuffled about, throwing menacing glances left and right, while keeping a healthy distance from me. If I didn’t have an ulterior motive for baking them treats every morning, I would do it just to do it. In a way, they were like a pack of hounds. I went from a girl who didn’t have pets to having a zoo.
But while the way they blushed when I brought them plates of muffins, cookies, or sweet bars was priceless, it also served the bigger picture. They were practically eating out of my hand. When the time came to run, they would suspect nothing.
Laughing to myself, I turned the cart down the main aisle. The ghost followed us toward the front of the store.
From the cereal aisle, a movement caught my attention. A man of average height and medium build wearing a hoodie and medical mask held a box of sugary flakes. But his gaze? It was focused on me.
I tripped into my cart.
“Missus!” Finn was at my side. “What’s the matter?”
My heart was in my throat. The way that man looked at me…. The gleam in his eyes….
“Nothing.” I forced the word out. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
Breathing hard, I made a bee line to the register. One of the other guys reminded me about the sage. He even offered to get it. Keenly aware that the ten pairs of eyes were looking at me funny, I swallowed the unnatural fear and tamped the urge to leave the store.
“No, it’s fine, let’s grab it,” I said.
My words fell flat. Unconvincing. I kept my movements as natural as possible, but I pulled up short when I noticed the cereal guy, without the box, selecting bananas.
We stared at one another.
He lifted his phone, looked at the screen, then back at me.
There was a moment where his brows drew together in a frown. With a small shrug, he put the device back in his pocket and began to walk toward us.
Toward me.
My pulse notched up ten speeds.
The hoodie guy wove through the crowd of shoppers. I wanted to call out, tell the guards, but…what if I was wrong?
If it was just a regular shopper, then I was a frightened little freak who cried wolf. I forced myself to look away. To reach for the packet of fresh herbs.
“Those ones are browning,” Finn observed. “You sure you’re alright?”
I dropped the plastic box. “Yep!”
Fumbling to pick it out of the bags of carrots and grab a different pack of sage, I shot a look over my shoulder.
A knife glinted in the masked man’s hand.
This was real. He was coming straight for me.
I angled the cart in his direction, gave it a hard shove, and screamed. It tore out of my throat without words, raw and panicked.
My guards reacted instantly. Hands went to jackets. Bodies shifted. The air changed. But it was Connor who appeared as if he had been summoned by my fear itself. One second, there was nothing. The next, he was there, crashing into the man in the hoodie with enough force to rattle the floor.
They went down hard.
All hell broke loose.
